Editors complain of information gap

Robert Salladay, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Friday, April 16, 1999

1999-04-16 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO; KOSOVO, YUGOSLAVIA -- President Clinton opened his speech before newspaper editors gathered in The City by remarking on the "stark contrast between a free society with a free press and a closed society where the press is used to manipulate people by suppressing or distorting the truth."

While U.S. journalists are not being found shot dead, as one dissident editor was this week in the Balkans, some of America's most prominent opinion-makers are accusing the Pentagon of kidnapping the facts on the war in Kosovo.

In a recent letter to the Pentagon, seven editors and bureau chiefs of national news organizations covering the war say they are getting far less information than they did during the Gulf War and the more recent bombing campaign in Iraq.

Not daring to venture back into Serbian-controlled Kosovo without an official escort, most U.S. journalists have been covering the war from the White House, NATO headquarters, the Pentagon and refugee camps in Albania.

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That gives the U.S. government a strategic advantage in a war that seems to have caught the country by surprise: The flow of information is easier to control, public opinion easier to manipulate.

Once again, the relationship between the military and press is under scrutiny during wartime.

"We of course recognize your need to withhold information that would jeopardize ongoing military operations or endanger the lives of individual members of the military," top-level editors at the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NBC, Associated Press, CNN and the Wall Street Journal wrote Defense Secretary William Cohen.

"There is a long history of cooperation between the media and the military on this point," the letter continued.

"But the current restrictions on the flow of information seem to us to go way beyond this need."

Clinton spoke Thursday before the American Society of Newspaper Editors at the Fairmont Hotel. It was a chance, Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart said beforehand, for the president to speak broadly about U.S. interests in Kosovo. The crowd of about 600 editors and writers gave Clinton a standing ovation when he arrived.

The president's brief visit to San Francisco, which attracted about 500 demonstrators, came amid reports of deadly NATO attacks on convoys of refugees in southwestern Kosovo. Clinton said the civilian deaths would not deter NATO attacks.

Reports' veracity draws fire&lt;

"If anyone thinks this is a reason for changing our mission," Clinton said, "then the United States will never be able to bring military power to bear again, because there is no such thing as flying airplanes this fast, dropping weapons this powerful, dealing with an enemy this pervasive, who is willing to use people as human shields, and never have this sort of tragic thing happen. It cannot be done."

But the attack, which Clinton said was "regrettable" but "inevitable," also raised questions about the accuracy of initial Pentagon and NATO reports on the matter - and whether Clinton was attempting to raise a red herring by implying those refugees may have been used as human shields.

NATO at first suggested the attacks on Kosovo Albanians were carried out by Yugoslav police, but then officials retracted the statement. There was no evidence the refugees were being used as human shields.

"Yesterday, was a really classic example of how the information should not be passed down," said Arianna Huffington, a conservative commentator who writes for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. "They effectively accused the Serbians of bombing the convoy to arouse public opinion against the war. A few hours later, they had to say it was NATO who bombed the convoy."

After his speech, Clinton was asked directly by one editor why the military was withholding information about the war.

The president blamed the Balkan weather and terrain, which he said makes it more difficult to evaluate targets. And he blamed the difficulty in getting the sprawling NATO alliance coordinated. He said he'd already spoken with two other NATO leaders about the information gap, and promised more details would be released.

"I think the more information we can get out there more quickly, the better we are," Clinton said. "The assumption is there is some deliberate scheme at work here, but I don't think that is the case. NATO has never done this kind of operation before and we're trying to work through it."

Reports lack specifics&lt;

However, unlike the Gulf War, said Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of the Washington Post, the Pentagon is not providing specific information about the number of bombing raids, location of targets, which raids were effective and which were not, and the type of aircraft carrying them out.

Restricting the flow of information may help the Pentagon avoid the kind of embarrassment it experienced after the Gulf War, when reporters discovered, for example, that military officials had greatly overstated the effectiveness of the Patriot missile-defense system.

Downie said Clinton actually provided some of the most specific information of the NATO campaign during his speech Thursday. The president said NATO had destroyed

"all of Serbia's refineries, half of its capacity to produce ammunition."

"I'm not talking about not giving us propaganda, which happened during the Persian Gulf War," Downie said.

"But it (the propaganda) was accompanied by a lot of specific information so you could keep track of how well things are going. We don't even know how many sorties, for example, produced dropped ordnance or not."

An apathetic public?&lt;

But there is a sense from some opinion makers that no matter what is occurring on CNN or in the Pentagon briefing room, Americans aren't paying attention to the Kosovo conflict. Like the Monica Lewinsky matter, it's almost as if the Washington elite and media are obsessed, but the rest of the country could not care less.

"People are turning it off," said Leon Panetta, Clinton's former chief of staff, who addressed the editors Wednesday. "It's hard to believe, but we're blowing the hell out of a country, sending over cruise missiles, and it's almost as if it's not going on."

Not to the demonstrators who marched across from the Fairmont during Clinton's speech. "Stop the bombing, stop the war," and "No war, no bombs, no new Vietnam," they shouted.

Among the protesters were members of a number of anti-war organizations, but many were unaffiliated. Betsy Podell, a grandmother from Sacramento, drove to The City to protest what she called "a disgrace."

"I think it (the war) is a coverup to distract attention from the Chinese troubles," she said. "Every time Clinton gets in trouble, he bombs someone. I think it's profoundly immoral."

Peg Rucker, who described herself as a housewife from Los Altos, had never taken part in a protest before.

"I think it's time to stop this nonsense before it escalates into World War III," she said.

There were also about 50 people demonstrating in support of the NATO action. They were shouting "Serbs are terrorists" and "Bomb Yugoslavia."

"We support the U.S. because they protect our people," said Arben Astafa, an Albanian from Montenegro who moved to Santa Clara in 1995 to escape the violence at home.

"It's about time they did something. The Serbs are killing innocent people and killing kids." &lt;